“Thank you, Lucius Cornelius,” Stichus squeaked.
“You’re very welcome, Lucius Gavius,” said Sulla from the bottom of his throat.
At which moment the gustatio—the first course—came in, hastily augmented, Sulla suspected, in honor of his return; for besides the normal fare of olives, lettuce salad, and hard-boiled eggs, it contained some little pheasant sausages and chunks of tunnyfish in oil. Enjoying himself hugely, Sulla tucked in, sliding wicked sidelong glances at Stichus, alone on his couch while his aunt applied as much of her side to Sulla’s side as she possibly could, and Nicopolis caressed Sulla’s groin shamelessly.
“Well, and what’s the news on the home front?” he asked as the first course was cleared away.
“Nothing much,” said Nicopolis, more interested in what was happening under her hand.
Sulla turned his head toward Clitumna. “I don’t believe her,” he said, as he picked up Clitumna’s hand and began to nibble its fingers. Then when he saw the look of distaste upon Stichus’s face, he began to lick the fingers voluptuously. “Tell me, love”—lick—”because I refuse to believe”—lick—”nothing’s happened.” Lick, lick, lick.
Luckily the fercula—the main courses—arrived at that moment; greedy Clitumna snatched her hand away and stretched it out to grab at the roast mutton with thyme sauce.
“Our neighbors have been busy,” she said between swallows, “to make up for how quiet we’ve been while you were away.” A sigh. “Titus Pomponius’s wife had a little boy in February.”
“Ye gods, another boring money-hungry merchant banker for the future!” was Sulla’s comment. “Caecilia Pilia is well, I trust?”
“Very! No trouble at all.”
“And on the Caesar side?’’ He was thinking of delectable Julilla and the grass crown she had given him.
“Big news there!” Clitumna licked her own fingers. ‘ They had a wedding—quite a society affair.’’
Something happened to Sulla’s heart; it actually seemed to drop like a stone to the bottom of his belly, and sit there churning amid the food. The oddest sensation.
“Oh, really?” He kept his tone disinterested.
“Indeed! Caesar’s elder daughter married none other than Gaius Marius! Disgusting, isn’t it?”
“Gaius Marius...”
“What, don’t you know him?” Clitumna asked.
“I don’t think so. Marius... He must be a New Man.”
“That’s right. He was praetor five years ago, never made it to the consulship, of course. But he was governor of Further Spain, and made an absolute fortune out there. Mines and the like,” said Clitumna.
For some reason Sulla remembered the man with the mien of an eagle at the inauguration of the new consuls; he had worn a purple-bordered toga. “What does he look like?”
“Grotesque, my dear! The most enormous eyebrows! Like hairy caterpillars.” Clitumna reached for the braised broccoli. “He’s at least thirty years older than Julia, poor dear.’’
“What’s so unusual about that?” demanded Stichus, feeling it time he had something to say. “At least half the girls in Rome marry men old enough to be their fathers.”
Nicopolis frowned. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say half, Stichy,” she said. “A quarter would be more like it.”
“Disgusting!” said Stichus.
“Disgusting, rubbish!” said Nicopolis vigorously, sitting up so she could glare at him more effectively. “Let me tell you, fart-face, that there’s a lot to be said for older men as far as a young girl is concerned! At least older men have learned to be considerate and reasonable! My worst lovers were all under twenty-five. Think they know it all, but know nothing. Erk! Like being hit by a bull. Over before it starts.’’
Since Stichus was twenty-three years old, he bridled.
“Oh, you would! Think you know it all, don’t you?” he sneered.
The look he got was level. “I know more than you do, fart-face,” she said.
“Now, now, let’s be happy tonight!” cried Clitumna. “Our darling Lucius Cornelius is back.”
Their darling Lucius Cornelius promptly grabbed his stepmother and rolled her over on the couch, tickling her ribs until she screeched shrilly and kicked her legs in the air. Nicopolis retaliated by tickling Sulla, and the first couch became a melee.
This was too much for Stichus; clutching his new book, he slid off his couch and stalked out of the room, not sure they even noticed his going. How was he going to dislodge that man? Auntie Clittie was besotted! Even while Sulla was away, he had not managed to persuade her to send Sulla packing. She just wept that it was a pity her two darling boys couldn’t get on.
Though he had eaten hardly anything, Stichus wasn’t upset by the fact, for in his study he kept an interesting array of comestibles—a jar of his favorite figs in syrup, a little tray of honeyed pastry the cook was under orders to keep filled, some tongue-cloying perfumed jellies which came all the way from Parthia, a box of plumply juicy raisins, honey cakes, and honeyed wine. Roast mutton and braised broccoli he could live without; every tooth in his head was a sweet one.
Chin on his hand, a quintuple lamp chasing away the beginnings of evening, Lucius Gavius Stichus munched syruped figs while he carefully perused the illustrations of the book Sulla had given him, and read the short accompanying Greek text. Of course he knew the present was Sulla’s way of saying he didn’t need such books, because he’d done it all, but that couldn’t stifle his interest; Stichus was not endowed with so much pride. Ah! Ah ah ah! Something was happening under his embroidered tunic! And he dropped his hand from chin to lap with a furtive innocence quite wasted upon its only audience, the jar of syruped figs.
*
Yielding to an impulse he despised himself for feeling, Lucius Cornelius Sulla walked next morning across the Palatine to the spot on the Palatium where he had encountered Julilla. It was high spring now, and the patches of parkland sported flowers everywhere, narcissus and anemone, hyacinths, violets, even an occasional early rose; wild apples and peaches were in full blossom, white and pink, and the rock upon which he had sat in January now was almost hidden by lushly green grass.
Her servant girl in attendance, Julilla was there, looking thinner, less honey-colored. And when she saw him, a wild triumphant joy suffused her from eyes to skin to hair—so beautiful! Oh, never in the history of the world had any mortal woman been so beautiful! Hackles rising, Sulla stopped in his tracks, filled with an awe akin to terror. Venus. She was Venus. Ruler of life and death. For what was life except the procreative principle, and what was death save its extinction? All else was decoration, the furbelows men invented to convince themselves life and death must mean more. She was Venus. But did that make him Mars, her equal in godhead—or was he merely Anchises, a mortal man she stooped to fancy for the space of one Olympian heartbeat?
No, he wasn’t Mars. His life had equipped him for pure ornamentation, and even that of the cheapest gimcrack kind; who could he be but Anchises, the man whose only real fame lay in the fact that Venus stooped to fancy him for a moment? He shook with anger, directed his hateful frustration at her, and so pumped venom into his veins, creating an overwhelming urge to strike at her, reduce her from Venus to Julilla.
“I heard you came back yesterday,” she said, not moving toward him.
“Got your spies out, have you?” he asked, refusing to move closer to her.
“That isn’t necessary in our street, Lucius Cornelius. The servants know everything,” she said.
“Well, I hope you don’t think I came here looking for you today, because I didn’t. I came here for a little peace.”
Her beauty actually increased, though he hadn’t thought it possible. My honey-girl, he thought. Julilla. It dropped like honey off the tongue. So did Venus.
“Does that mean I disturb your peace?” she asked, very sure of herself for one so young.
He laughed, contriving to make it sound light, amused, trifling. “Ye gods, ba
by girl, you have a lot of growing up to do!” he said, and laughed again. “I said I came here for peace. That means I thought I’d find it here, doesn’t it? And by logical progression, the answer must be that you don’t disturb my peace one iota.”
She fought back. “Not at all! It might simply indicate that you didn’t expect to find me here.”
“Which leads straight back to indifference,” he said.
It was an unequal contest, of course; before his eyes she was shrinking, losing her luster, an immortal turned mortal. Her face puckered, but she managed not to cry, just gazed at him bewildered, not able to reconcile how he looked and what he said with the true instinct of her heart, which told her in every beat that she had caught him in her toils.
“I love you!” she said, as if it explained everything.
Another laugh. “Fifteen! What would you know of love?”
“I’m sixteen!” she said.
“Look, baby girl,” Sulla said, his tone cutting, “leave me alone! Not only are you a nuisance, you’re rapidly becoming an embarrassment.” And turned, and walked away without once looking back.
Julilla didn’t collapse in floods of tears; it would have been better for her future welfare had she. For a passionate and painful bout of tears might have convinced her that she was wrong, that she stood no chance to capture him. As it was, she walked across to where Chryseis, her servant girl, was standing pretending to be absorbed in the prospect of an empty Circus Maximus. Her chin was up; so was her pride.
“He’s going to be difficult,” she said, “but never mind. Sooner or later I shall get him, Chryseis.”
“I don’t think he wants you,” said Chryseis.
“Of course he wants me!” said Julilla scornfully. “He wants me desperately]”
Long acquaintance with Julilla put a curb on Chryseis’s tongue; instead of trying to reason with her mistress, she sighed, shrugged. “Have it your own way,” she said.
“I usually do,” answered Julilla.
They began to walk home, the silence between them unusual, for they were much of an age, and had grown up together. But when they reached the great temple of Magna Mater, Julilla spoke, voice determined.
“I shall refuse to eat,” she said.
Chryseis stopped. “And what do you think that’s going to do?” she asked.
“Well, in January he said I was fat. And I am.”
“Julilla, you’re not!”
“Yes, I am. That’s why I haven’t eaten any sweetmeats since January. I’m a little thinner, but not nearly thin enough. He likes thin women. Look at Nicopolis. Her arms are like sticks.”
“But she’s old!” Chryseis said. “What looks good on you wouldn’t look good on her. Besides, you’ll worry your parents if you stop eating—they’ll think you’re sick!”
“Good,” said Julilla. “If they think I’m sick, so will Lucius Cornelius. And he’ll worry about me dreadfully.”
Better and more convincing arguments Chryseis could not produce, for she was neither very bright nor very sensible. So she burst into tears, which pleased Julilla enormously.
*
Four days after Sulla returned to Clitumna’s house, Lucius Gavius Stichus came down with a digestive disorder which prostrated him; alarmed, Clitumna called in half a dozen of the Palatine’s most fashionable doctors, all of whom diagnosed an attack of food poisoning.
“Vomiting, colic, diarrhoea—a classic picture,” said their spokesman, the Roman physician Publius Popillius.
“But he hasn’t eaten anything the rest of us haven’t!” protested Clitumna, her fears unallayed. “In fact, he isn’t eating nearly as well as the rest of us, and that’s what’s worrying me most!”
“Ah, domina, I think you are quite wrong,” lisped the nosiest of them, Athenodorus Siculus, a practitioner with the famous Greek investigative persistence; he had wandered off and poked into every room opening off the atrium, then into the rooms around the peristyle-garden. “Surely you are aware that Lucius Gavius has half a sweetmeat shop in his study?”
“Pish!” squeaked Clitumna. “Half a sweetmeat shop, indeed! A few figs and pastries, that’s all. In fact, he hardly ever touches them.”
The six learned medical men looked at each other. ‘ ‘Domina, he eats them all day and half the night, so your staff tell me,” said Athenodorus the Greek from Sicily. “I suggest you persuade him to give up his confectioneries. If he eats better foods, not only will his digestive troubles clear up, but his general level of health will improve.”
Lucius Gavius Stichus was privy to all this, lying on his bed too weak from the violence of his purging to defend himself, his slightly protruding eyes jumping from one face to another as the conversation jumped from one speaker to another.
“He has pimples, and his skin is a bad color,” said a Greek from Athens. “Does he exercise?”
“He doesn’t need to,” said Clitumna, the first hint of doubt appearing in her tone. “He rushes about from place to place in the course of his business, it keeps him constantly on the run, I do assure you!”
“What is your business, Lucius Gavius?” asked the Spaniard.
“I’m a slaver,” said Stichus.
Since all save Publius Popillius had started life in Rome as slaves, more jaundice appeared suddenly in their eyes than they could find in Lucius Gavius’s, and they moved away from his vicinity under pretext that it was time to leave.
“If he wants something sweet, then let him confine himself to the honeyed wine,” said Publius Popillius. “Keep him off solid foods for a day or two more, and then when he’s feeling hungry again, let him have a normal diet. But mind—I said normal, domina! Beans, not sweetmeats. Salads, not sweetmeats. Cold collations, not sweetmeats.”
Stichus’s condition did improve over the next week, but he never got fully well. Eat nothing but nourishing and wholesome foods though he did, still he suffered from periodic bouts of nausea, vomiting, pain, and dysentery, none as severe as his initial attack, all debilitating. He began to lose weight, just a little at a time, so that no one in the house really noticed.
By the end of summer he couldn’t drag himself as far as his office in the Porticus Metelli, and the days he fancied lying on a couch in the sun grew fewer and further apart. The fabulous illustrated book Sulla had given him ceased to interest him, and food of any kind became an ordeal to consume. Only the honeyed wine could he tolerate, and not always even that.
By September every medical practitioner in Rome had been called to see him, and many and varied were the diagnoses, not to mention the treatments, especially after Clitumna began to resort to quacks.
“Let him eat what he wants,” said one doctor.
“Let him eat nothing and starve it out,” said another.
“Let him eat nothing but beans,” said a doctor of the Pythagorean persuasion.
“Be consoled,” said the nosy Greek doctor, Athenodorus Siculus. “Whatever it is, it’s obviously not contagious. I believe it is a malignancy in the upper bowel. However, make sure those who come in physical contact with him or have to empty his chamber pot wash their hands thoroughly afterward, and don’t let them near the kitchen or the food.”
Two days later, Lucius Gavius Stichus died. Beside herself with grief, Clitumna fled Rome immediately after the funeral, begging Sulla and Nicopolis to come with her to Circei, where she had a villa. But though Sulla escorted her down to the Campanian seashore, he and Nicopolis refused to leave Rome.
When he returned from Circei, Sulla kissed Nicopolis and moved out of her suite of rooms.
“I’m resuming tenancy of the study and my own sleeping cubicle,” he said. “After all, now that Sticky Stichy is dead, I’m the closest thing she has to a son.” He was sweeping the lavishly illustrated scrolls into a burning bucket; face twisting in disgust, he held up one hand to Nicopolis, who was watching from the doorway of the study. “Look at that! Not an inch of this room that isn’t sticky!”
The carafe of honey
ed wine stood in a caked ring on the priceless citrus-wood console against one wall. Lifting it, Sulla looked down at the permanently ingrained mark amid the exquisite whorls of the wood, and hissed between his teeth.
“What a cockroach! Goodbye, Sticky Stichy!”
And he pitched the carafe through the open window onto the peristyle colonnade. But it flew farther than that, and broke into a thousand shards on the plinth of Sulla’s favorite statue, Apollo pursuing the dryad Daphne. A huge star of syrupy wine marred the smooth stone, and began to trickle down in long runnels which soaked into the ground. Darting to the window to look, Nicopolis giggled.
“You’re right,” she said. “What a cockroach!” And sent her little serving maid Bithy to clean the pedestal with rag and water.
No one noticed the traces of white powder adhering to the marble, for it too was white. The water did its work: the powder vanished.
“I’m glad you missed the actual statue,” said Nicopolis, sitting on Sulla’s knee, both of them watching Bithy as she washed away.
“I’m sorry,” said Sulla, but looked very pleased.
“Sorry? Lucius Cornelius, it would have ruined all that wonderful paintwork! At least the plinth is plain marble.”
His upper lip curled back to show his teeth. “Bah! Why is that I seem permanently surrounded by tasteless fools?” he asked, tipping Nicopolis off his lap.
The stain was completely gone; Bithy wrung out her rag and emptied her basin into the pansies.
“Bithy!” Sulla called. “Wash your hands, girl, and I mean wash them properly! You don’t know what Stichus died of, and he was very fond of honeyed wine. Go on, off you go!”
Beaming because he noticed her, Bithy went.
Masters of Rome Boxset: First Man in Rome, the Grass Crown, Fortune's Favourites, Caesar's Women, Caesar Page 18
